


i ache for no other reason than for the wish that i could've known you

by beansandavocados



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Big Gay Love Story, Character Death, M/M, gender crisis lead to writing about greek gods, its a tragic love story, its just a little drabble i wrote at three in the morning, its kinda shit because i didnt edit it much (or at all)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28081821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beansandavocados/pseuds/beansandavocados
Summary: Everyone knows the story of the Fall of Icarus..But it's only told by the old man who doomed himself and his son to an imprisoned life.The story through Icarus' eyes is one of doomed love and aching heartbreak.
Relationships: Apollo/Icarus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	i ache for no other reason than for the wish that i could've known you

**Author's Note:**

> this shit is entirely self-indulgent and is in no way to be meant as anything else. the only reason im posting it is because someone on tumblr wanted to read it and i love validation for my shit writing (love you tho babe <3)
> 
> enjoy it and pls walk away knowing that i am a sad member of the alphabet mafia who had finals breathing down their neck when they wrote this

Icarus was a boy who grew up trapped. He had always longer to see the entirety of the blue sky. 

Instead, he helped his father, who has scorned the king and caused for the man and his son to be trapped in the center of a labyrinth. The father was the narrator of Icarus’ story.

The story goes that Icarus’ father made two pairs of wings, built from the lightest metal and glued together with the candlewax they were given.

The boy and his father escaped with the wings strapped to their backs and a song in the wind. Icarus had heard his father’s warning to stay away from Apollo’s sun, unless he  
wanted to meet his death over the dazzling sea beneath him.

But the boy didn’t care. He was free, he could see the sky as he wanted. He could see the jewel-crusted waves beneath him. He could feel the burning whips of wind around him. The boy was free. 

The story goes that a foolish Icarus flew too close to the sun and the wax holding his wings together melted. His father watched his son fall from the sky, screaming as he fell.  
His father was the narrator.

Icarus would’ve noted nothing of what his father had. It was not the old man’s story.

Icarus did not forget the sun, he meant to get close. Apollo had been one of Icarus’ only comforts in the labyrinth and he had always waited for the sun god to pull the star across his small window to the sky. The god would watch this boy as well, from his flaming chariot. Every day without fail, Icarus would look directly toward the god and his cargo and would smile with a little more ease than before. 

The two met like this every day, at the same time, no matter what was supposed to be done by the two. 

They never spoke to one another, but the affection and comfort for one another grew. Apollo eventually asked for his sister, Artemis’, help to try and get a message to Icarus. Every attempt made by the god himself would only burn up before ever reaching the boy.

Artemis had agreed to her brother’s wishes and every night, on her own journey across the sky with the moon, she would drop Icarus small bursts of the sun’s light that shone all the way down until Icarus would catch them. The mortal hadn’t ever imagined that Apollo would ever send him his own rays of sunlight, but he also hadn’t meant to love the god like he did.

Every night this happened, and Icarus didn’t know how to tell the sun god he enjoyed these gifts, until the boy saw how light bounced off a polished sheet of bronze in his father’s workshop. He knew what he could do. 

A week later, Icarus had piece of bronze no bigger than his two hands that he had polished and shined so much, the boy’s own reflection could not find a single flaw in him.

On his next passing over the labyrinth’s window, Apollo was surprised to see his chariot’s light coming back to him. When the god saw Icarus’ mirror, coupled with his smile, the god nearly forgot about his duties and any rules that forbade his from taking Icarus far from that labyrinth.

But no matter how many times both mortal and god gifted each other far-off smiles and sunlight, they could go no further. 

When Icarus heard of his father’s plans to escape, he had hope. Hope to finally leave their prison and to maybe find a way to meet the brilliant god he’d grown to love.  
After months of careful, secretive work and dozens of sunlit gifts, the wings were completed. Icarus could hardly wait to leave but he had heard his father’s warning about the wings failing. The boy heard it and knew it was a wasted breath.

So when Icarus and his father finally escaped, the boy didn’t care where he went with his wings. He only cared for the wind that carried him and the god that had given him something to look forward to in the hellish prison. 

Icarus wanted to fly right to him, and so he did.

He beat the mechanical wings as hard as he could directly to the sun god making his way across the sky. With every second, the chariot was brighter and clearer, and Icarus could just start to make out the team of fiery horses pulling it. He could see the hair and the eyes of the god he adored. He could see all of it as his skin began to blister from the sun’s heat and the wax began to melt, but the mortal was too drunk off the wind and the pure want to be as close as he could to Apollo.

The god himself was shocked to see this boy, this young man who had somehow stolen a piece of Apollo’s sanity, flying on metallic wings right toward his flaming chariot. The god could see the elation on Icarus’ face from the freedom he now had. 

And Apollo’s heart sunk when the first feather fell to the blue of Poseidon’s ocean.

The god urged his horses to a sprint across the sky to catch Icarus as the wings shed feathers faster and faster. But no matter how hard Apollo drove the horses, it would not be enough to bet the heat of the sun that melted the wax. 

On that day, the sun moved faster than it ever had on its journey across the sky. All for a mortal that was foolish enough to have a god love him.

When the wind could no longer carry Icarus and began his descent back to Earth, the mortal began to laugh. He laughed because the boy was free and, the god he loved, loved him back.

The screams the boy’s father had heard were actually the laughter of a foolish man in love.

Apollo was not fast enough to catch Icarus before he hit the azure waves and sank into their watery depths.

The god cried out for the love he was never going to have with the mortal and wished he was fast enough.

Every year after the fall of Icarus, Apollo would race across the sky in his chariot, seeing if he could’ve been fast enough to catch and hold the boy. It is a date marked as the shortest day of the year, all because a god wasn’t fast enough to catch his love.


End file.
